ON THE UNSERIOUSNESS OF HUMAN AFFAIRS
Teaching, Writing, Playing, Believing, Lecturing, Philosophizing, Singing, Dancing
By James V. Schall
List Item No. 306
ISBN: 1-882926-63-3 (cloth)
204 pages
List Price: $24.95
Internet Special: $21.21 — 
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Echoing philosophers such as Josef Pieper, Schall explains how the modern world has inverted the rational order of human affairs, devaluing the activities of leisure and placing an exaggerated emphasis on utilitarian concerns. Though he does not deny the importance of those necessary and prosaic activities that take up the bulk of our daily lives, Schall puts these pursuits in perspective by asking, what do we do when everything we have to do is done?
Defending the importance of simply wasting time, losing ourselves in play, and Chesterton's claim that "a thing worth doing is worth doing badly," Schall contends that the joy that accompanies leisure, festivity, and conviviality gives us a glimpse of the eternal. Such activities also enable us to get beyond ourselves—indeed call us beyond ourselves—and are therefore essential if we are to rightly order our worldly concerns. For as Schall reminds us, neither man nor his projects are the highest things in the universe, and it is only by understanding this fact that man can attain to his true dignity.
Citing Aristotle, Samuel Johnson, Charlie Brown, and New Yorker cartoons with equal sobriety, Schall unfolds a defense of both Being and being, of the radical contingency and therefore goodness of existence itself. On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs is an instructive volume whose countercultural message is of vital importance.
What They're Saying...
"On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs is the result of Fr. Schall's many years of teaching, reading and re-reading the great books of Western civilization. It's an understatement to say his sources are eclectic. To illustrate a point, he may cite Plato, Sts. Augustine or Aquinas, Flannery O'Conner, or Charlie Brown and Lucy from the Peanuts cartoon. Wherever he finds truth expressed in clear and convincing fashion, he uses it to great effect."
— Inside the Vatican
"[F]ather Schall is above all a teacher and therefore also a habitual reader and inciter to reading and the wisdom it opens us to. Do not open a Schall book unless you are prepared to open many more books toward which he gently compels. What makes his own books distinctive is this combination of listening to others while searching for fresh ways to teach the old and familiar truths."
— The Review of Politics
"If you welcome good natured quarrels and debates, whether with students or colleagues or friends, then Unseriousness is for you. Get them to read Fr. Schall's new book…. Then watch the adrenaline caused sparks fly."
— Fellowship of Catholic Scholars
Read more reviews...
Chapters Include:
- On Teaching and Being Eminently Teachable
- Truth and the College of Your Choice
- On the Education of Young Men and Women
- On the Mystery of Teachers I Have Never Met
- On Wasting the Best Years of Our Lives
- On the Teaching of Political Philosophy
- On the Pleasure of Walking about Derby
- Why What Is Useless Is the Best Thing About Us
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